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Baby clothes: Yes! Buy preowned holiday outfits

Confession: For safety reasons, I’m not big on second-hand shopping when it comes to baby gear. In my book, Save a Bundle: 50+ Ways to Save Big on Baby Gear, I barely mention it. But holiday outfits are an exception. Buying them preowned is a great way to dress your baby up for the holidays for a fraction of what you’d spend otherwise. You can find cute, like-new holiday outfits at consignment shops, on Craig’s List and at swapping sites, such as www.thredup.com, and then re-sell or swap them when you’re done. Chances are your baby will only wear them once or twice before the holidays are over, which is why they hold up so well. I wish I would have taken my own advice. When my second daughter was an infant, she worn her sister’s holiday handmedown, a red-plaid jumper with a white collar, in our family holiday Christmas card photo. My first daughter wore the red-plaid jumper in the family photo two years before, when she was four months old. So we have two holiday Christmas card photos from different years with different babies in the same outfit. It was a $60 romper, after all. Still, I should have bought something cute and inexpensive for baby #2 secondhand. Oh well. Only Grandma was sharp enough to notice.